Pictures of You Pictures of Me
by setepenre-set
Summary: Early for a kidnapping, Megamind wanders around Roxanne's empty apartment, sees that she has hung a candid photograph of the two of them on her wall, and throws himself into a tailspin of stress and confusion over it. (based on a tumblr prompt by ramendobe)
The picture is new; it's the first thing that Megamind notices after he ascertains that Miss Ritchi is not, in fact, home at the moment, waiting to be kidnapped like a cooperative victim. Oh, well. Megamind will just have to wait for her, instead. And while he waits he can examine this new interior decorating decision that Miss Ritchi has—

He freezes in front of the picture frame.

It's—

That's—

It's a picture of him.

A picture of him with Roxanne, to be specific (Miss Ritchi, he berates himself, Miss Ritchi; she's never given him permission to use her first name and she never will stop kidding yourself you pathetic loser and why the hell is there. A picture. Of him. On her wall.)

It's a candid shot; he remembers this moment, but he doesn't remember any cameras pointed at them. All of the reporters were swarming Metro Man (whose back is just barely visible in the corner of the shot, blurry and out of focus—why is Metro Man the one who's out of focus?)

It had been a bad kidnapping that day; nothing had seemed to go right. He had snatched Roxanne (Miss Ritchi, you sad excuse for a sentient being) up in the middle of what turned out to be a lunch date with her mother. He hadn't known her mother was in town; if she'd just told him, just mentioned it during their previous kidnapping, they could have worked around—anyway. Roxanne (Miss Ritchi) had been fairly enraged about that, and then the laser had misfired and burned a hole in her favorite dress (Megamind knows it was her favorite because she wore it 3.6 times more often than any other outfit).

And he'd been having a bad week.

It's always a bad week for Megamind, the week before Christmas. Too many—family—togetherness—memories—etcey-tera. (Or however you pronounce that weird etc-word thing.) And then Roxanne had been sniping at him about her family, as though missing a lunch date was some sort of disaster as though—

And so they'd sort of wound up screaming at each other on live television until Metro Man burst into the Lair and quickly demolished the laser that Megamind hadn't even bothered to set up properly again after the whole hole-in-Roxanne's-dress debacle.

Not one of Megamind's finer moments, to be sure.

And yet, somehow—when Megamind and Roxanne had both been dropped off on the steps of City Hall—he to be arrested for what was approximately the fifty-seven-thousandth time, she to do her usual post-kidnapping newscast—when the other reporters had surrounded Metro Man and Megamind and Roxanne had been left in this little bubble of silence—their eyes had met and—

Everything had struck Megamind, all at once, as really absurdly funny. Which was basically a miracle, since nothing ever strikes Megamind as funny the week before Christmas. But what made the whole thing even more remarkable was the fact that Roxanne had seemed to find it all hilarious, too.

Both of them had burst into startled, uncontrollable laughter, there in the icy street with the snow coming down all around them. They'd laughed and laughed and Roxanne had slipped and almost fallen on a patch of ice, and then caught herself by grabbing hold of the collar of his cape, and had actually stayed like that, arm half around him, voluntarily touching him, for an entire, glorious eight seconds, both of them still screaming with laughter, until Metro Man at last escaped from his crowd of admirers and tore Megamind away.

And that's what the picture on Roxanne's wall is of: Roxanne with her arm thrown around Megamind's neck, gripping his collar, the two of them laughing into each other's eyes, faces inches apart.

And Megamind remembers this moment with perfect clarity, every detail, down to the snowflakes in Roxanne's eyelashes and the way her lipstick was slightly smudged at the lefthand corner of her mouth but—

He really wants this photograph, wants to hold in his hands real, concrete proof that it happened, that it wasn't just something he made up inside his head. His hands ache to tear it off the wall—

The wall.

Why is it on Roxanne's wall? What could she possibly want with this photograph?

Does she—

Could she maybe—

Does she remember this moment fondly as well? That's why people usually keep photographs, right? And Roxanne didn't just keep this picture, she framed it and hung it on her wall. Where people could see it. That—that has to mean something, right?

Megamind reaches a shaking hand out to touch the glass of the photograph and—

"—Sir!"

—and almost has a heart attack when Minion's voice comes through the watch on his wrist.

"What?" he says, or shouts, really, hand clutching his chest.

"…is Miss Ritchi there yet, Sir?"

Megamind eyes the picture as though it is a sp-i-der about to leap at him and bite him.

"Code: today's Evil Scheme is cancelled, Minion."

He just—he can't deal with this right now.

Okay, so apparently he can't deal with this at all.

He has to cancel three more Evil Schemes after he nearly gives himself a panic attack each time he thinks about seeing Roxanne—Miss Ritchi—

And then he can't seem to think of any more Evil Schemes. Which is a problem. This is a problem.

So Megamind does what he always does when he has a problem.

He kidnaps Miss Ritchi.

Yes, he's aware that this is recursive and makes no sense. He's never claimed logic as his strong suit.

Except that it does sort of make sense, doesn't it?

PROBLEM: unable to kidnap Miss Ritchi because REASONS.

SOLUTION: kidnap Miss Ritchi.

IT SOLVES ITSELF. HA! HE IS A GENIUS! AHAHAHAHA

(Has he mentioned that he hasn't been sleeping very well lately?)

(Or eating?)

(He's been drinking a lot of coffee, though. Which is totally sort of like eating.)

(ANYWAY on to the KIDNAPPING! Which is going to be totally fine and not at all terrifying in spite of the fact that he's done this hundreds of times before come on Megamind, get it together.)

"Where have you been?" is the first thing Roxanne says when he takes the bag off her head, as opposed to oh god someone help me or why are we still in my apartment (it's a semi-kidnapping; Megamind's working up to it, all right?) or even oh no, it's you again, is it.

Where have you been is not any of the lines he imagined Roxanne saying when he rehearsed this conversation and so Megamind's brain short circuits a bit and he ends up blurting out—

"Why do you have a picture of me on your wall?"

Roxanne freezes for three seconds and then sighs. It's a—relieved sigh? She sounds relieved? Why does she sound relieved?

"So you did see it," she says.

Megamind finds that he's nodding his head, nodding, nodding, and forces himself to stop.

"Do you understand?" she asks, eyes on his face.

Megamind looks at her blankly.

"You don't understand," she says under her breath. "Right, okay, do you—do you think you could untie me now? And possibly sit down? You look like you're about to fall over."

This is so far off script that Megamind finds himself actually following her suggestions without thinking about it, only realizing half-way through undoing the knots on Roxanne's wrists that untying your captive is not really recommended kidnapping etiquette.

Fuck it, he decides. This kidnapping is a bust anyway. He finishes untying Roxanne and lets her guide him to sit on the couch, lets her sit beside him, lets her—

Take his hand? Why is she—? How is this—?

"Megamind," Roxanne says slowly as he stares, dumbfounded, at the sight of her fingers laced with his black-gloved ones, "Do you remember the day that picture was taken?"

He nods.

"That was a pretty terrible day, right?" she asks. "It was really bad. Really bad. I was so angry with you."

"I remember," he says.

"But," she says, "then you looked at me and—I looked at you and—and everything was all right again. More than all right. Everything was good. I had been having—god, the most terrible week. Stupid Hal at work, and then my mother, asking why I wasn't—but then we looked at each other and there was this, this click and I felt happy again. And it occurred to me that—Megamind, I'm going to tell you something, and I need you to believe me, okay? Can you do that for me?"

"Okay," Megamind agreed.

"I am not. Dating. Metro Man," Roxanne said. "I have never dated him. Please tell me that you believe me."

"I—" Megamind looks at Roxanne, looks at the earnest expression on her face. "If you weren't, then. Why would you—all this time, why would you let me think—why would you let everyone think that you were?"

Roxanne took a shaky breath.

"I could give you several reasons," she said, "but I'm pretty sure the most honest one—and I am well aware of how fucked-up this is going to sound—I think I was afraid that you would stop kidnapping me."

Megamind stared at Roxanne. Roxanne stared at their hands, a flush creeping along her cheeks.

"But you hate getting kidnapped," he said slowly.

"Some of it," Roxanne said, "I hate—I hate the taste of that stupid spray and the smell of that bag. I hate the rope burns and the way you never seem to adequately plan your evil schemes and the dumb banter that you and Metro Man always have. I hate all that."

"Yes," Megamind said. "That's—you've pretty much described everything that happens during a kidnapping."

"I like the part where I get to see you," she says.

"What." Megamind says blankly.

"God, Megamind, do you know how worried I've been this past month?" she jerks the hand that's not holding his through her hair. "I was afraid you'd seen the picture and that it had freaked you out or something! I was afraid I was never going to get to see you again," she adds in a quiet voice.

"I—" Megamind swallows. She's holding his hand. She's still holding his hand. She said she likes seeing him. "I'm really not that easy to get rid of," he says.

She laughs. God, he loves the sound of Roxanne's laughter.

"Good," she says. "Because I don't want to get rid of you. Somebody showed me that picture down at the station, and I—they were just going to throw it away; I couldn't—Megamind, I don't want to look back on this years from now and think 'I could have had that; we used to be—' I—would you ever consider spending time with me, you know, outside of the whole kidnapping thing?"

A strange feeling sparks in Megamind's chest. Is this—is this hope?

"Like what we're doing now?" he asks.

"Yes, like what we're doing now, except more—here, stand up, let me show you." Megamind lets Roxanne pull him to his feet. "Do you remember how we were standing, that day in the picture?" she asks, and puts her arm around his neck. "We were standing like this," she says, tightening her fingers on his collar. "And we were laughing," she whispers, tipping her face up towards his.

They aren't laughing now, and Megamind finds that he's put one hand on Roxanne's waist, which—that isn't exactly accurate, either; he was in handcuffs last time; his hands were behind his back, but—she seems to be all right with it? Feeling unbelievably daring, he lets himself cup the side of her face in his other hand.

"Miss Ritchi—"

"My name," she tells him, "is Roxanne."

And that's—

She gave him permission to use her name.

"Roxanne," he says.

He's shaking, tremors that start inside and spread outwards like ripples in water, like the way the ground moves during an earthquake.

"There," Roxanne murmurs, so close he can see the sweep of her eyelashes, so close he could see the smudges of her lipstick if she was wearing any. "You get it now, don't you? You understand?"

"I really, really hope so," Megamind breathes, and crosses that last little distance that lies between them.


End file.
